The 6th Scientific Writing for Young Astronomers (SWYA) school took place from 5–9 May 2025 in the historic town of Sintra, Portugal. Organised by Astronomy & Astrophysics and hosted at NH Sintra Centro, the event brought together 30 early-career researchers and 12 lecturers from across Europe and as far away as Chile.
Since 2022, the Astronomy & Astrophysics Journal (A&A) has been published in open access under the Subscribe to open (S2O) model conditional on the renewals of library subscriptions, allowing unrestricted access to all papers published in the journal, regardless of geographic or economic barriers. We are strongly committed to maintaining this policy in the future, and continuing to publish A&A as a journal by astronomers, for astronomers.
The Board of Directors and the Editors of Astronomy & Astrophysics are deeply appalled by and concerned with the recent events in Ukraine where the sovereignty and independence of the country and the freedom and the lives of its citizens are suffering direct and brutal military threat by an act of war from its neighbour.
We condemn this reckless act of aggression by the Russian Federation on independent Ukraine, and ask for an immediate cease-fire. No political narrative can justify the loss of lives of innocent people. All disagreements can and must be solved by diplomatic means rather than bombing.
The Board of Directors and the Editors stand united with our Ukrainian colleagues and all Ukrainian people. Ukraine is part of the A&A community and one of the 27 sponsoring countries of Astronomy & Astrophysics. Ukrainians are fighting to defend the independence of their country and democracy. We appeal to our colleagues worldwide to immediately act and support every effort to help stop the atrocities and help the Ukrainian people.
The Scientific Writing for Young Astronomers (SWYA) School is returning in 2025. Scheduled to take place in Sintra, Portugal, from 5-9 May, this programme is designed to enhance the writing and communication skills of young researchers in astronomy. The SWYA programme provides a unique opportunity to learn from experienced mentors, share insights with peers, and strengthen the impact of your scientific work.
Registration is now open, and the deadline to apply is 15 November 2024. Register here.
Revised scope for A&A Letters.
Astronomy & Astrophysics has received a particularly high number of applications for the 2026 A&A Awards. We thank the community for this strong response and for the continued trust of early-career researchers in choosing to publish their work in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
To ensure that all applications receive the careful consideration they merit, the timeline for announcing the 2026 awardees has been revised.
The awardees will now be announced by mid-April 2026.
Paris, France, 24 September 2025. In the 2024 edition of the Journal Citation Reports™ released by Clarivate in June, Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A) received an Impact Factor of 5.8, placing it firmly at the head of the leading journals for original research in astronomy and astrophysics. We were pleased with this result, and are even more pleased to report that, after one of our community members identified missing citations from the highly-cited Gaia Data Release 3 article and raised the issue with the Editors, Clarivate reviewed the record at the request of the publisher, EDP Sciences, and corrected the calculation. A&A’s Impact Factor is now 6.1, and this corrected figure will be formally reflected in the October reload of the JCR.
The winners of the first edition of the A&A awards for "Best PhD Thesis" and "Early Career" will be announced very soon!
The ceremony will take place during the Opening Ceremony of European Astronomical Society (EAS) Annual Meeting (https://eas.unige.ch/EAS2021/) on Monday 28 June, at 14:20. https://eas.kuoni-congress.info/2021/programme/
